Brimstone Angels

“It should have been you, warlock,” Havilar said, pressing her past the altar. “But no mind. Only you will know my mistake, and you were always meant to die.”

“Assulam!” The altar burst into pieces, making Havilar step back and giving Farideh room to retreat. But the shards of stone had no more clattered to the ground but Havilar was advancing on her again.

Suddenly it felt as if a net had been cast over her, and she found herself dragged toward Havilar and the sword. Her hand convulsed around the rod, and trying to move her own arm became a battle fierce as the one they’d just finished. It wasn’t Havilar casting spells, but it was Havilar’s body standing in front of her.

“Who are you?” Farideh whispered, her jaw stiff against the spell.

“Your sister,” the creature in her twin’s skin replied. “For now.” She placed the tip of the sword against Farideh’s breastbone and tilted her head. “I wonder what she’ll do when she realizes that she’s the one who killed you. Will it break her, or will she be glad she finally managed it?”

The force holding Farideh’s body stiff snapped audibly as she wrenched her arm upward. Havilar’s eyes widened, and Farideh felt the being try to close the force back over her again. But Farideh was already shouting the trigger word that vanished in the roar of a wall of flame.

The fire only singed Havilar’s hair and the edges of her armor, but the force of the spell threw her backward. She crashed against the wall, her head snapping back like a discarded doll, and crumpled at its base.

Farideh started toward her sister’s body, but her legs buckled. The strange magic still clung to her. She wrenched herself up and half-stumbled, half-crawled across the mess of bodies and blood and rubble. Havilar lay slack and senseless on the floor, her breath ragged and her pulse thready. She didn’t stir when Farideh tapped her cheek.

Farideh cursed. She hurried up the stairs. Kalam lay sprawled across the shop floor, cut from throat to belly and leaking blood and gore onto the polished floors. Farideh’s knees buckled before she was messily sick beside him. Her head was still pounding and when she wiped her face, her hand was streaked with blood that dripped from her nose.

Panting, she reached for the healing potions and gathered up an armful before stumbling back downstairs. She fed one to Havilar and watched as her wounds closed and her bruises faded. But she didn’t wake. A ruby drop of syrup pooled in the corner of Havilar’s mouth and ran down her cheek like a stream of blood. Farideh cracked another. And a third, but Havilar didn’t wake. She cursed.

Her hands cold and shaking, she opened the last of them and drank it herself. It tasted like bile and chalk, but it made the pain in her head fade and the shock that kept threatening to overtake her body retreat into a simpler, more focused panic.

There was nothing to be done for the Ashmadai, and if she didn’t hurry, there would be nothing to be done for Havilar either. Farideh could almost hear Mehen bellowing not to move Havilar, especially not when her neck had slammed against the wall like that, to try and wake her before she slipped away.

But whatever was wrong with Havilar, whatever had come over her, no Ashmadai was going to forgive her because she might have been concussed. Farideh shoved the rod into her belt, and the sword as well, maneuvered her arms around her sister’s middle, and hauled her up the back stairs into the little garden. The rain was still coming down in a heavy patter. She laid Havilar on the muddy ground while she unlatched the little shed and led the donkey out.

Havilar needed a priest, and quickly. Farideh couldn’t trust the House of Knowledge, not when Lorcan was probably still looking for her, when the Ashmadai were suspicious of the place, when Rohini was still some sort of threat. She’d take Havilar to the little shrine to Selune, then go back and find Brin. Or maybe whoever guarded the shrine would be there this time. Either way, it was the safest place she could think of. With quite a bit of struggle, she got both herself and Havilar onto the donkey, and got the donkey moving toward the Blacklake District.

The shrine still waited, silvery even under the clouds. Farideh dragged Havilar up the shallow stairs of the entry, easing her over the steps and trying to ignore the fact that the potion hadn’t been enough to heal her hip or completely remove her headache.

“Whoever you are,” Farideh said as she reached the doorway, “I hope this hurts.”

She yanked hard, dragging Havilar across the threshold of the temple. Whatever magic protected the entries resisted ever so slightly, but as Havilar’s body broke the plane of the doorway, the magic burst into a shower of sparks. Gods, Farideh thought as she laid her sister gently on the stone floor, what did that mean?

A noise from the rear of the sanctuary made her jerk her head up. She stood and crept down the aisle of the benches.

“Lycanthropes are the least of your worries. Shar’s children are here.”

“Netherese?”

Farideh followed the sounds of the voices to the room off to the left of the altar. “Aye, and more. Devil- worshipers, a spellplague pocket, and something I can’t pinpoint that’s throwing off an awful lot of necromantic energy. Orcs in every bloody ruin-and not the civilized kind. There’s a building near the castle that’s oozing Far Realm contaminate.” There was a man in there with dark hair speaking into some sort of amulet that scintillated with silver light. He paced as he spoke, but kept his face away from Farideh. The priest? she wondered. The voice sounded familiar. “And a bloody volcano on top of everything. Fisher, cut your losses and clear out. This city is going to fall.”

“We pull out, the Netherese gain another stronghold,” the voice from the amulet said.

“You don’t pull out and you’re going to lose the agents you have here,” the man retorted. “You aren’t equipped to bring down this many threats.”

“We’ll send more agents.”

“And you’ll lose more agents you can’t spare.” The man stopped and ran a hand through his hair, and Farideh nearly cried out in joy: the priest was Tam.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “this isn’t something you can handle. Short of convincing the gods to bless a handful of Chosen, or maybe just come on down themselves, there is nothing the Harpers can do for Neverwinter.”

“We have to try.”

“Something’s wrong with Havilar,” she said.

Tam let loose a string of curses-then he spotted Farideh. “Fisher, I have company.” He looked her over as he tucked the amulet away. “You don’t look so well yourself,” Tam said, following her into the sanctuary. “What happened?”

What happened, she thought, is I have done everything wrong. If I hadn’t made the pact, I would still be safe in Arush Vayem. Lorcan would never have sent the orc after Brin. The Ashmadai would never have killed the orc and traced it to Lorcan. He never would have chased Farideh into the shrine and she never would have fled back to the Ashmadai, who Havilar wouldn’t have killed because they would still be safe in the Smoking Mountains. A flaw, she thought.

She merely shook her head, fighting tears. “Too many things.”

Tam kneeled beside her and coaxed an abbreviated version of the fight from Farideh, the details of how Havilar acted, how she’d knocked her cold and finally, why she’d brought her back to this shrine, where the spells on the door had crackled and sparked.

“Well,” he said after a long moment, “she’s clearly been tampered with by a fiend. Is she a warlock too?”

“No,” Farideh said tightly. “What do you mean tampered with?”

“She’s fighting off the remains of some sort of spell. Possession maybe. A domination, perhaps. We’d have to ask her when she wakes up.”

“But she will wake up?”

“Likely,” Tam said. “She’s not out because she’s concussed, if that’s what you fear. Let her rest in the temple. The blessings should unwork what’s left.” He regarded Farideh stonily. “I take it your … friend is involved.”

“No friend of mine did this.”

“Farideh,” he said gently. “Let’s not pretend to be fools. I know what you are. And I can guess you’re acquainted with the cambion who accosted me in Neverwinter Wood?”